ABOUT TOGETHER APART
Specific to our era is the infinite ability to create and disseminate information and images, which leads to greater reproduction, assimilation, and appropriation. The JPEG encompasses exactly this: it is made up of an identical code, but exists in endless aberrations, with no original and no need for an original. This is the image culture we all exist in today, and Sean Solomon's installation in Together Apart explores this notion. The catalogue of differing characters begin with several templates - blank slates of a figure, which are then warped and adjusted to create an entire spectrum of heterogeneity. Distorted copies of copies, with no existence of an original. The concept of the mass group portrait has a lineage and has been explored in art, comics, and animation before. The work continues this history, commenting on the diffusion of ideas and idea of the "original" through silk screen prints: a medium that is generally used for creating multiples, to create "one-of-a-kind" art objects. Beyond the objects themselves, the characters that make up the pattern range from original character designs to generic memes. The total pieces, depicting copies of copies, made from copies of a copy, are each unique. The work is a play on the line between the borrowed and the original, the multiple and the unique, and an exploration of memetic image culture.